Tuesday, March 01, 2011

When will Mt. Rahm blow? Never

Have you seen the viral video of Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel blowing a gasket when, during his time in the White House, he cursed out a protester who got up in his face, almost knocking the man back with a barrage of vile oaths?

Or have you heard the audio clip of the tantrum Emanuel threw during a news conference when he was in Congress? The one where he makes former Cub manager Lee Elia sound like Miss Manners?

You have not.

Why? Because such video and audio don't exist.

Because the Rahm Emanuel who is a volcanic, intemperate, untended fire hose of profanity is largely a myth.

Because the idea that Emanuel has been ingesting industrial-strength sedatives for the last three months in order that he not lunge, figuratively if not literally, at his critics, is just a joke that's based on a cartoon version of him. (Tribune photo by Chuck Berman)

Yes, there was some truth behind the exuberantly foul-mouthed @MayorEmanuel character, made famous in the Twitter stream by Columbia College assistant journalism professor Dan Sinker during the recent campaign.

Emanuel swears a lot in private. He swears easily, fluently, casually, gratuitously. But not compulsively. And never publicly.

"Rahm never loses control," said U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., his former colleague in the House and a supporter of his mayoral candidacy. "He's one of the most disciplined people I've ever known. People talk about his colorful language but it's never in outbursts where he flies off the handle."

Think about his successful run for mayor. During debates and encounters with the media he stayed almost robotically on message, speaking in calm, sometimes steely tones and always using his inside voice.

With flying colors he passed the "Queen Sister" test — the marathon interrogation at the Chicago Board of Elections during which a parade of indignant activists such as Georzetta "Queen Sister" Deloney peppered him with repetitive and often irrelevant questions related to his legal residency.

Or just think about his career. You don't get to be a confidant of two U.S. presidents and a U.S. congressman in a key leadership role if you're a boiling cauldron of emotions.

"He's a very intense man, of course," said Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, who now holds Emanuel's old seat in the Northwest Side 5th District. "How could he not be and get where he's gotten? But he doesn't lose his temper, he uses it."

Quigley added, "I've seen him angry, I've seen him express his displeasure with people, I've seen him be very blunt. But I've never seen him out of control."

Accordingly, those who are expecting or even hoping that Chicago's next mayor will be even more irascible and splenetic than Richard M. Daley, who just this week sputtered accusingly at reporters during a news conference about gun violence, are going to be disappointed.

Daley is a pulsating, raw nerve compared to Emanuel. It's been part of Daley's charm that he so often takes the media's bait — such as last May when he suggested he could prove a point by sticking a bayonet in a reporter's rear end — and doesn't hide his emotions very well.

Emanuel is not charming in that way. He's so disciplined he's in the gym most mornings well before many of us are even awake, and if and when he lets people have it, it's going to be away from the camera and microphones.

Whether Emanuel has ambitions for higher office — governor, even president — he simply won't melt down before our eyes, have a hissy, stamp and curse, shout or even pound the lectern and look like he wants to throw daggers at us.

Comments

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Not in public. But behind the scenes, you bet he will.
Been sucked in by the spin?

ZORN REPLY -- To blow, to erupt, to lose it....my suggestion, my claim, here is that there is little in Emanuel's track record -- particularly his recent track record -- to show that he's going to do that.

Will he dress down underlings? Perhaps raise his voice in private? Gosh, I hope so, should these underlings deserve it. Is there a leader who doesn't. Does this count as "losing it"? Not to me.

Those who have been sucked in here are those who mistake his intense, often privately profane manner and authoritarian bearing for a lack of emotional control. This is not a policy argument; not a brief either way about his plans for the city or even whether he'll be an effective mayor. It's a stylistic observation.

Come back here in a year, "Joe," and we'll dicuss which of us was "sucked in by the spin."

If your money is on "never" and he doesn't erupt, how would you then be declared the winner? Now that's a logic problem!

Seriously, I'm kind of torn here. I agree a jerk in private is a jerk. And there are ways to get points across when someone screws up without raising one's voice and using profanity. Not a good way to motivate, but if that's his M.O., and he's had some success, well, people who work for him can't say they didn't know what they were getting into.

As long as his subject bow before him and his media darlings fawn over him, he'll have no reason to. Once he is safely sworn in and the winds of adversity blow, I'm sure the real Rahmbo will let loose his verbal slings and arrows. But hey, its still better than that dundering Moron-Braun.

FINALLY someone who sees through the media myth! Personally, I figured this out a long time ago. And I'm in Sweden...

And as for Nice Try:

What he said that time had nothing to do with "women's monthly bodily functions". It was said to a MALE staffer, and it included something like "take the tampon out of your MOUTH!". What kind of tampon do you have in your mouth? The kind dentists use, obviously, not the kind women use. He's a doctor's son and a doctor's brother, remember? He thinks of tampons the way male medical personnel do, not the way women do. It was a stupid thing to say, admittedly, and I doubt he'll say it again, but I also doubt it even occurred to him that others might think of another kind of tampon than he did.

ZORN REPLY -- I would not defend the "tampon" remark in this way. I've not seen it rendered as "...out of your mouths..." nor do I think that's what Emanuel had in mind. Basically it was a crude, sexist way of saying to male staffers, "man up," or "be a man," which is itself a sexist command. I dealt with this in an earlier post when I griped about the word "wuss."

That remark is what it was -- ditto the charge to leftists that they were "retarded" -- and certainly off-point today. I'm not arguing that Emanuel is a sensitive new-age fellow.

---As with most leaks, no one who wasn't there knows what he actually said, much less the context. I believe he denied the tampon remark during the Tribune debate where Carol wanted to "talk about tampons." Even if it was said, it can be taken different ways. Does it mean something along the lines of stop acting like a girl (eg. "weak")? Or take the plug out and let the words, um, flow? I've never heard the expression before, and even the urban dictionary hasn't settled on a definition. ;)

Seriously: the consensus seems to be that Emanuel got kicked down from political director to communications deputy in the Clinton White House because he was too abrasive and had offended too many people.

And the two big stories about Emanuel--the knife and the fish--date to before that.

In short, I think it's likely that he really has toned down his behavior. Obviously he swears a lot, but so do a lot of people.

You're part right. Some searching seems to indicate that the quote comes from Alter's book The Promise, and was originally rendered as "Take your f--- tampon out and tell me what you have to say." The word 'mouth' does not occur explicitly, but is pretty implied. I don't know of any other tampons that would prevent someone from speaking, than the kind dentists fill your mouth with. Do you?

And -- I may be wrong, but -- frankly, I can't remember ever hearing or reading Rahm say something clearly sexist. He's too comfortable with himself and too obviously masculine to need that kind of language. It's generally the insecure guys that try to boost their self-confidence by belittling women.

Also, as delrose so correctly points out: we weren't there. We don't know for sure exactly what was said, in what context, or even if it was said at all.

ZORN REPLY -- I would still read this as saying "stop being meek like a woman and be brave like a man and tell me what you have to say," -- your interpretation simply doesn't make sense in context.

I ran into him a few times while he was my congressman and I never found him to be anything but charming and affable. My guess is he will use that idea people have about his temper as a way to manipulate situations.

Dienne posted "public v. private doesn't make a whole lot of difference"....
How true. and how sad that so many of our politicians seem to be drawn from the pool of idiots that we all knew back in our school days. Does the job attract those types?

I would really like to see you do more of this -- directly challenging claims by your paper's page-two columnist. Without getting into a rant about specifics, I'm a reporter-turned-lawyer who can't take much his more of his unfounded assertions.

I appreciate that you do it civilly, but I would wager you don't agree with the underlying premise or claims of most of his columns. I understand if you can't say that flat-out in your own columns, but if the paper isn't going to have you do the Mary Schmich/Dennis Byrne debate-type thing with him, please challenge him, respectfully, in this manner.

I'm begging you. I don't know if I can take having to switch my subscription to the Sun-Times, which I believe only has one reporter in its newsroom!

Carol Moseley Braun got plenty of well deserved criticism during the campaign.However ,she posted a fairly classy concession statement on her website.You won't hear about this because the media is too busy writing about not only Rahm ,but his fake alter ego.

ZORN REPLY -- She had her chance on election night to delivery a classy speech -- like Chico did -- or a barnburner, like del Valle did. But after the election, nobody is going to seek out what ELSE they have to say. Get real. They lost. Even you didn't post a direct link.

Are you calling me a nobody?I was interested in finding out if the campaign websites still existed,I also wanted to see what they had to say after the campaign dust had settled.Both Braun and del Valle were offered positions on Emanuel's transition team and both turned him down.(more real news that is hidden amongst widespread speculation).
Braun shoots first and asks questions later.I assume any graciousness was an afterthought by an adviser.

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"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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